Ubuntu, Canonical, and IP

Recently there has been a flurry of concerns relating to the IP policy at Canonical. I have not wanted to throw my hat into the ring, but I figured I would share a few simple thoughts.

Firstly, the caveat. I am not a lawyer. Far from it. So, take all of this with a pinch of salt.

The core issue here seems to be whether the act of compiling binaries provides copyright over those binaries. Some believe it does, some believe it doesn’t. My opinion: I just don’t know.

The issue here though is with intent.

In Canonical’s defense, and specifically Mark Shuttleworth’s defense, they set out with a promise at the inception of the Ubuntu project that Ubuntu will always be free. The promise was that there would not be a hampered community edition and full-flavor enterprise edition. There will be one Ubuntu, available freely to all.

Canonical, and Mark Shuttleworth as a primary investor, have stuck to their word. They have not gone down the road of the community and enterprise editions, of per-seat licensing, or some other compromise in software freedom. Canonical has entered multiple markets where having separate enterprise and community editions could have made life easier from a business perspective, but they haven’t. I think we sometimes forget this.

Now, from a revenue side, this has caused challenges. Canonical has invested a lot of money in engineering/design/marketing and some companies have used Ubuntu without contributing even nominally to it’s development. Thus, Canonical has at times struggled to find the right balance between a free product for the Open Source community and revenue. We have seen efforts such as training services, Ubuntu One etc, some of which have failed, some have succeeded.

Again though, Canonical has made their own life more complex with this commitment to freedom. When I was at Canonical I saw Mark very specifically reject notions of compromising on these ethics.

Now, I get the notional concept of this IP issue from Canonical’s perspective. Canonical invests in staff and infrastructure to build binaries that are part of a free platform and that other free platforms can use. If someone else takes those binaries and builds a commercial product from them, I can understand Canonical being a bit miffed about that and asking the company to pay it forward and cover some of the costs.

But here is the rub. While I understand this, it goes against the grain of the Free Software movement and the culture of Open Source collaboration.

Putting the legal question of copyrightable binaries aside for one second, the current Canonical IP policy is just culturally awkward. I think most of us expect that Free Software code will result in Free Software binaries and to make claim that those binaries are limited or restricted in some way seems unusual and the antithesis of the wider movement. It feels frankly like an attempt to find a loophole in a collaborative culture where the connective tissue is freedom.

Thus, I see this whole thing from both angles. Firstly, Canonical is trying to find the right balance of revenue and software freedom, but I also sympathize with the critics that this IP approach feels like a pretty weak way to accomplish that balance.

So, I ask my humble readers this question: if Canonical reverts this IP policy and binaries are free to all, what do you feel is the best way for Canonical to derive revenue from their products and services while also committing to software freedom? Thoughts and ideas welcome!

Without the IP policy, if we went to a big company selling Ubuntu and asked them to financially support the product, they could just say “Sorry, you gave it to the community for free, so we get to use it for free. You can’t stop making it, nor can you stop giving it to the community for free, so you’re screwed!”

Canonical provides resources to Debian because they recognise the value that Debian brings to Ubuntu – without Debian, Ubuntu would cost much more to produce. The same argument applies to companies making use of Ubuntu. If Canonical run out of money to fund Ubuntu, these companies would have to pay more to rebase their product on something else. It’s rational for them to choose to ensure that Ubuntu still exists, even if you don’t attempt to force them to.

(as an aside, is it guaranteed that any money companies pay to Canonical under this policy is invested in Ubuntu rather than used for any other purposes?)

Josh Berkus
on August 28, 2015 at 12:59 am

None of these responses explain how the IP policy is supposed to generate revenue. I suspect the answer is that it doesn’t and can’t. Which would be a good reason for Canonical to abandon it, as they have other initiatives which did not generate revenue.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:04 am

If it did generate revenue, would that be a good reason to keep it?

Josh Berkus
on August 28, 2015 at 1:04 am

Wow, you are amazingly evasive. I really hope that you don’t work for Canonical. If so, you’re part of the problem …

Josh Berkus
on August 28, 2015 at 1:07 am

Wow, WTH dude, you’re a “community liason” for Canonical? And this passive-aggressive crap is your response to serious questions from people who like and use Ubuntu? No wonder the company is in the doghouse with developers right now.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:08 am

It’s a serious question, you’re the first person who has used it’s effectiveness (or lack there of) as a reason to accept or reject it

Josh Berkus
on August 28, 2015 at 1:13 am

What I’m saying is that you’re failing at your job right now. Here we have a comment stream full of people who are interested in Canonical’s revenue picture, including folks who are upstream contributors to software Canonical depends on (I’m a PostgreSQL contributor, and was an Ubuntu contributor back when). And every single one of your responses here is belligerently defensive, and evades giving any real answers. If this is how you’ve been handling questions on the IP policy from the public and partner companies, no wonder everyone hates the policy. They don’t trust you, and for good reason.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 1:36 am

Josh,
You should probably give Michael a tiny bit of leeway. It’s damn hard to be the messenger from an absolutely crap corporate policy. Think of it this way, could you spin this any better if you and to defend this sort of policy from your employer.

I’ve been at Canonical for years now over any number of stupid stuff they’ve done when it comes to their bonehead busisness models. And there have been a lot of them in the past. I saw Jono have to step out in from and defend any number of things…with the same aplomb. It’s a tough gig.

Instead of beating up the messenger, just obliterate the message, and give a good counter argument..something precious…. back to the messenger so they can take it back to the dark heart of Mordor and throw into the fire.

-jef

Josh Berkus
on August 28, 2015 at 1:48 am

Jono never waded into a comments section like this. I suppose he had more experience before he took the job.

Anyway, “you’re failing at your job right now” is meant as direct advice, because he is failing right now and I want him to do better. If it’s his job to sell a crap policy, then the way to do that is “I understand your concerns, we’ve been discussing that back at Canonical” or “what adjustments to the policy do you think would be helpful” or even “I can’t comment on that right now.” Nitpicking, hairsplitting and strawman arguments do NOT help his employer.

This policy really isn’t that bad, nor that different from the Apache Foundation’s policy around trademarks. I think it’s highly unlikely to generate revenue (per other comments in this thread). But right now the reason why it generates active hate is the incredibly poor job Canonical has done of selling it.

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 1:16 am

Exactly. It just can’t generate revenue. Red hat realize it years ago when they shut down the desktop edition and focus on the enterprise and support services.

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 5:59 am

…and here lies the challenge. Thanks to the generosity of Canonical making Ubuntu free in the truest sense of the word, it has fundamentally limited building scarcity or restricting derivative uses.

The difficulty is that by Canonical building an IP policy that has one foot in the Free Software purity camp and one foot that compromises elements of that purity it just causes animosity which I worry leads to harming Canonical and Ubuntu’s reputation.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 12:40 pm

That’s true, but I haven’t heard of any better options that will allow Canonical to keep Ubuntu’s repos free for community use without allowing them to be abused by commercial interests.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 1:00 pm

abused is an interesting choice of words. Who gets to define abuse? And how exactly are you communicating what abuse is and is not?

Again this language makes it sound like business interests in the community are doing something wrong without having defined at the outset the true bounds of what is allowed.

The IP policy for example doesn’t say anything about revenue generation as a latching condition. So if the goal is to get people making money from this to trickle back… then make it clear in the policy.

What this is right now is a speed trap on the highway..without a speed limit reduction sign.
First you encourage businesses to adopt Ubuntu widely with a lot of rah rah about the Ubuntu philosophy and always being free and yadda yadda and then you hit them with a speeding ticket when the travel through the business district at high speed.

Be more up front about fee schedule and expectations as to how much commercial “partners” are going to “taxed” for “leveraging” Ubuntu. And let those commercial entities…in the “community” do their ROI assessments.

The way you are doing it now, with the after the fact enforcement dollars is going to cause a lot of crap for internal people at other companies who picked Ubuntu initially for its gratis nature and then come to find out they are going to cost their employer money. If I as a tech decision maker can’t know the long term costs of deployment..wtf would I ever choose that tech? This policy makes early adopter Ubuntu fans inside external commercial entities look terrible to their business management.

-jef

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 3:05 pm

“abused is an interesting choice of words.”

I’ll admit, it’s not a great choice of words. I tried to come up with a better one, but I’m not sure English as a proper word for “taking all of the crab legs on the buffet just because you technically can”.

It mentions non-commercial use, but it can certainly be made clearer, that’s another point where I’m working internally on getting clarifications published.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 4:33 pm

If I can “technically” take all the crab legs… I’m taking all the crab legs. If you offer all you can eat, then I’m going to test that policy to its limits and then sue you if you restrict me after the fact. Don’t offer me all the crab legs if you aren’t prepared to have me take… all the crab legs.

Hence why the cellular telcos in the US are in hot water right now over “unlimited” plans…for you know.. deceptive practices and what not concerning what was “technically” offered to customers and what they actually got.

The IP Policy is in-congruent with some of the other claims Ubuntu as a project as made about “always free” without any caveats with regard to binaries. And that Ubuntu promise and philosphy text still exists on the website as noted by others..without even a footnote with regard to the status of the binaries.

You can’t have your cake and eat it to. Putting a restriction on commercial use or revenue is a restriction on what the “community” can do. You can’t separate the commercial interests as something not “community” without also admitting that canonical is NOT part of that community either. Which is crazy.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 4:37 pm

If Canonical had a way to exclude me from entering the all you can eat buffet, because I’ve taken all the blasted crab legs.. then fine. But Cannical can’t roll up and expect me to pay more because I ate my fill after they offered all you can eat. All you can do is cut me off. But Canonical doesn’t have a way to do that..because they designed their repository system to be entirely without gates. You can’t come back in now with lawyers and make up for that decision.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 4:56 pm

“If Canonical had a way to exclude me from entering the all you can eat
buffet, because I’ve taken all the blasted crab legs.. then fine.”

But we don’t, and I’m not even sure how we technically could do that without requiring people register or something before they can get Ubuntu.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 5:14 pm

That’s right… you don’t.

Look man, I’m not saying that the ubuntu promise allows for a workable business model. I don’t think it does. I think Canonical has from day one over-promised.. with the best of intents of course. But that promise is your problem now. It restrict what business models you are able to attempt. But Canonical made its own bed here. Either give up the promise or give up the IP policy. Just be self-consistent with regard to project and business model.

If you are going to reserve the right to keep people out of the party, because they eat all your chips and beer, then your gonna have to check IDs at the door…or have a greeter…or something. You can’t just have have your BBQ in “the commons” and leave the chips and beer out unattended with a sign that says “free beer and chips, take all that you want” and then expect the cops to police people who take all your beer.

Man up, and make people register so you can exclude people later for bad action. If you don’t want to implement that sort of thing, then you really can’t have a CoC with respect of usage.

Oh did I mention the CoC? If you didn’t have moderator control over the communication channels, your CoC enforcement could never be effective either. But you do have moderator control for..contributors…you do make them…register… but users you dont. So as a result you have zero control over their actions. ZERO.

Not my fault noone inside the fenceline thought that far ahead and actually thought they could make the promise work in combination with a self sufficient business.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 5:31 pm

You can’t just have have your BBQ in “the commons” and leave the chips

and beer out unattended with a sign that says “free beer and chips, take
all that you want”

Hey man, I’m from the South, that’s exactly how we do BBQs. But the expectation is that you’re not taking that food around the corner and selling it.

and then expect the cops to police people who take all your beer.

I don’t expect the cops to police who is taking what. I expect that I can kick somebody out of my BBQ when they’ve taken too much, because it’s my BBQ. The cops are only called of that person refuses to leave.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 5:35 pm

If the BBQ is actually in the commons… or in someone else backyard… you really dont have grounds for them to leave.

So I pull packages from the mirror at my nearby University. You are going to ask me to leave their server? Really? Nope. They can restrict me from their server. But you have no standing to ask me to stop pulling from that infrastructure.

And if its your servers.. then make all users register and lock people out.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 5:39 pm

And making the distinction between eating your chips and reselling your chips.. is laughable. if your are okay with me coming back to your BBQ again and again to eat chips after you’ve told me to leave for reselling… is laughable.

If you want to restrict me… then fine…then no more chips for me..for any purpose. Do it that way. Do it the RHEL (pronounced real) way.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 5:47 pm

Man…parties must suck where you live 🙁

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 5:52 pm

I have parties in private spaces.. not a commons.. and i have a select membership.. i dont open up to the public.. that would be crazy.

Even at the curling club when we have big events we have a bouncer and we check ids..because you know…drunk people suck some times…and someone has to take out the trash.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 5:56 pm

Well if you’re ever in Florida, let me know and I’ll give you all the not-for-resale BBQ pork you can eat.

“If I can “technically” take all the crab legs… I’m taking all the crab legs.”

And that is the tragedy of the commons.

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 1:48 pm

That’s a red herring, your IP doesn’t address that issue. Your IP policy says nothing about those repos. I could be hosting the binaries on my own server and your policy would still ban that usage.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 1:11 am

The real problem here is the the cost is entirely opaque. Not so much that it’s pissing people off…but that as a company there’s no way for me to know how much its going to cost me until after I’m already chosen to base my product on Ubuntu from any sort of documented fee schedule..

It’s impossible for me to estimate an ROI on the value that paying Canonical provides my company. I know how much it will cost me to migratem. But the cost to placate Canonical It’s an open ended calculation. And trying to actually talk to Canonical legal about whether or not my particular anticipated crosses the boundary of what is allowed in their IP policy is a non-starter.

This is a huge problem for Canonical going forward. They are confusing their potential customers.. because its soooo after-the-fact in how the IP policy is being enforced. Its enforcement not sales.. they aren’t making the case for value you get in paying them. The approach makes it appear like your paying a penalty for doing something wrong…when you thought you were doing what you were allowed to do.

It’s dumb. It’s a great way to make your potential customers and partners look to another technical solution… as they try to let off some.. cough… Steam.

That’s a different topic. Your comment was “getting those who profit from Ubuntu to give some of that profit back to Ubuntu.”. Canonical is profiting from Debian. Is Canonical giving some of that profit back to Debian?

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:03 am

Ubuntu is not Debian. Ubuntu is Ubuntu. It is a derivative of Debian, but it is it’s own independent product.

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 1:05 am

So derivatives of Ubuntu need to share profit back to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu doesn’t need to share profit back upstream to Debian. Gotcha.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:07 am

Not at all, true derivatives (building from source packages like Ubuntu does with Debian) don’t need to share profit back, and they aren’t subject to the IP Policy’s restrictions.

Binaries are trivialities. Fortunately, GPL guarantees that those trivial binaries are freely distributable. Unfortunately, not all packages are GPL licensed.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:58 am

They aren’t trivialities to a distro maintainer.

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 5:48 am

I think this is the key point: the argument here is whether people believe source and binaries should be treated different in terms of distribution and profit sharing.

Speaking personally, I am generally of the view that the producer of Free Software code would intend the resulting binaries to also be Free Software. I think when we start futzing with that belief structure, it gets us into the shakey ground we are seeing here.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 28, 2015 at 7:06 pm

The Ubuntu Promise needs to be updated to draw the distinction. if Canonical really believes there is a distinction between source and binary.. then it should be enshrined in the promise.

My edits in brackets….
http://www.ubuntu.com/about/
“The Ubuntu Promise
Ubuntu [source code] is free. Always has been and always will be. From the operating system to security updates, storage to software.

Ubuntu [binaries are] fast to load, easy to use, available in most languages and accessible to all.

Ubuntu applications [source code] are all free and open source — so you can share them with anyone you like, as often as you like.

Ubuntu [binaries] comes with full support and all kinds of services available worldwide.”

If you don’t add my brackets into that statement then the promise reads to mean source AND binary. It can’t just mean source, because the support reference is nonsensical with regard to source. The fast to load and easy to use statement is nonsensical when it comes to source.

I don’t get a crap if canonical is being revisionist. I just want them to be consistent. The IP policy and the Ubuntu promise are not consistent with each other and that is causing confusion.

Not at all, actually. If I write software, distribute binaries and source code, I would not want a third-party to modify the binary and redistribute it. I would expect them to edit the source code, build binaries of their own and distribute that.

There’s a very inherent different between source code and binaries.

Anonymous
on August 31, 2015 at 2:05 pm

Then you don’t believe in Freedom 2 – “The freedom to redistribute copies”.

Matthew Garrett
on August 28, 2015 at 1:19 am

How does building from Debian’s source packages reduce Debian’s costs?

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 1:14 am

Michael, canonical does to debian the same thing others are doing to ubuntu..

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:24 am

Not quite the same, Ubuntu only pulls source packages from Debian, and only does that once every 6 months. Most Ubuntu-based distros still use the Ubuntu archives for every day installation and updates.

Matthew Garrett
on August 28, 2015 at 1:30 am

Does Ubuntu remove every single Debian trademark from every source package it imports?

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 1:53 am

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still instances of Debian’s trademarks somewhere in Ubuntu packages, if there are they want them removed they know they just need to ask.

Matthew Garrett
on August 28, 2015 at 1:59 am

So if Debian had Ubuntu’s IP policy, Ubuntu would probably be in violation of it? Why don’t you feel that Debian’s trademarks deserve to be treated in the same way as Ubuntu’s?

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 2:01 am

We would only be in violation of our own policy if we are currently in violation of Debian’s trademarks anyway. Either way the solution is for us to remove those violating trademarks as soon as they are pointed out to us.

Matthew Garrett
on August 28, 2015 at 2:05 am

No, your policy doesn’t restrict itself to only requiring that infringing trademarks be removed. If that’s not its intention, can Canonical make an explicit statement to that effect?

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 2:11 am

Yes, I’m working on getting such a statement published

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 6:00 am

This is a guess: but I presume it less about generating revenue but more about restricting companies from building derivs without kicking back some of the washingtons to Canonical.

The problem with that plan is that the entities what Canonical is going after are ones who, themselves, get no revenue from distributing Ubuntu. What was the first thing they shut down under the new policy? Kubuntu, which is free and nonprofit. Now they’re going after CoreOS, who also distrbutes their stuff for free.

If Canonical wants money, they should maybe try pursuing people who actually have money.

However, you’re correct that that’s not directly related to license enforcement, although IP was definitely an issue in the Riddell dispute (he claims that one of the motivations behind his ouster was questioning the policy). Sorry to muddy the waters.

Regardless, unless you have some way to use the IP policy to get AWS to pay Ubuntu (and you don’t, believe me), then all of this is rather pointless.

Matthew Garrett
on August 28, 2015 at 11:36 pm

Just in case there’s any confusion on this – CoreOS have no products based on Ubuntu, and I don’t believe Canonical have contacted us on anything related to their IP policy.

Rebuttal of David “Lefty” Schlesinger (aka stonemirror’s) latest lies and stolen photographs, ie fresh harassment from The Original Internet Psychopath

[line by line rebuttal….]

[Only in the mind of the clinically insane is the person who gets their house set on fire in the night anything but the victim, not the ‘stalker’. Schlesinger boasts of owning and publishing stolen nude photos, not I. But in clinical studies of demented stalkers like David “Lefty” Schlesinger they almost always claim to be the victim, it is a hallmark of their personality disorder and/or mental illness ] more : extinct-marsupial.org

Rebuttal of David “Lefty” Schlesinger (aka stonemirror’s) latest lies and stolen photographs, ie fresh harassment from The Original Internet Psychopath

[line by line rebuttal….]

[Only in the mind of the clinically insane is the person who gets their house set on fire in the night anything but the victim, not the ‘stalker’. Schlesinger boasts of owning and publishing stolen nude photos, not I. But in clinical studies of demented stalkers like David “Lefty” Schlesinger they almost always claim to be the victim, it is a hallmark of their personality disorder and/or mental illness ] MORE :

I suspect that the point you’re missing, Michael, is that this is what happens on any comment I make on Disqus, anywhere. I made a point on “not engaging him” for over three years, and it made no difference in his activities. Go read my blog article, please.

Your “downvoting” his “commentary” is actually beside the point here.

Michael Hall
on August 28, 2015 at 2:30 pm

Ok, I can understand that. It might help to post info about what he’s doing for everyone reading the comments, but don’t address him directly. Just say “By the way, this troll follows me everywhere posting this trash, here’s the background if you’re interested, otherwise just ignore him”. The last thing you want, it seems, is to turn it into a dialog with him.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 4:40 pm

I am not the troll here, I am the one Schlesinger is PUBLISHING STOLEN NUDE PHOTOS OF ON HIS OWN WEBSITE with zero authorization. This is not “trash” it is … Fact. http://www.extinct-marsupial.org read the facts there, please.

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 4:56 pm

David / Melanie – take your argument elsewhere, I don’t want it on my blog.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 4:58 pm

ask your friend David “Lefty” Schlesinger aka ‘stonemirror’ to take down the stolen nude photos he is AGAIN publishing on his own website!

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 5:30 pm

Stop it! I am blocking you if you don’t stop this right now. Take your argument elsewhere.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 5:31 pm

do you endorse his revenge porn, Jono?

Anonymous
on August 28, 2015 at 6:33 pm

I don’t endorse anything other than you stopping bickering on my blog. I am not suggesting you both stop arguing, just do it somewhere else.

when David stops publishing stolen, nude photos of my body (which were never on the internet until he got them from a mentally ill ex-gf) then we can not “engage” with each other.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 4:26 pm

You published stolen, nude photos of my body on your new website 3 months ago, not three years, Grandpa.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 4:25 pm

Schlesinger recently began once again to publish stolen nude photos, ie “revenge porn.” He needs to stop doing this.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 4:09 pm

what you call “evidence” is barking mad delusion, and you are the one bragging of publishing private photos, not I. You are the one bragging of getting away with arson, not I. I never burned anyone’s house.

every single collection of statements you make on any subject is guaranteed to be the complete inverse of verfiable fact. You are on the wrong side of logic, every. single. time. you open your nicotine stained trap and go “MOOOOOOOOOO!”

I have archived testimony from your other stalking victims : Kathy Sutphen, Victor Cypert, Aaron Rossetto, etc ; but you aren’t capable of dealing with facts. Denial and lies are your food and air. You shrivel and shriek and spin when confronted with truth. This is the definition of a complete psychotic break with reality, and you live it – every single day of your sickening and miserable existence. You are eerily similar to Ted Bundy in the way you prevaricate and rant and weasel.

Well, all I can say is that there’s nothing barring you from lawyering up and bringing a civil suit against me so you can present all of this testimony in front of a jury and see whether they’re persuaded by it. Get an injunction to bar me from using the Internet, if you can. Sue me for destruction of property and intentional infliction of emotional damage, if you like.

The Austin Police Department didn’t believe I had a thing to do with your car getting torched — bad karma, dude — maybe you can convince a jury differently.

Beyond that, I’d only note that, of the two of us, one of us is hiding behind the (misspelled) name of a 1960s singer and stalking the other’s comments, and one of us isn’t hiding at all.

Yeah, sixteen replies from you certainly establishes you as a model of level-headedness and believability.

Keep digging.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 5:32 pm

and you are around a dozen posts on this topic, you haven’t yet begun to forth rabidly. Are you on a new mood stabilizer medication?

Sunshyne Tomlan
on June 30, 2016 at 10:17 am

Bakersfield…
Worst air quality in the entire nation. THE NATION. 12th most obese city in the nation. 6th most dangerous city in California. Number 1 in the nation for vehicle theft/vandalism. Worst city in the nation in regard to pedestrian deaths. Worst maintained roadway system in California according to AAA. Number 1 on Men’s Health’s list of drunkest cities in America. Number 2 in the nation for publicly disputed officer involved shootings. And finally, number 1 in the nation for drug use per capita.
I applaud hometown loyalty, but let’s not kid ourselves. This place is terrible. Yes, there are good people, there are nice areas, but the same is true for Detroit, and there’s no way on God’s green earth I’d move my family there either. If you’re in Bakersfield, it’s because you were born here and haven’t gotten out, or because a job in oil took you here and you’re biding your time. Nobody moves to Bakersfield for the “lifestyle” or “destination experience”. That’s the cold hard truth. And the motto? “Life as it should be”? Really?

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 5:21 pm

You don’t have any significant assets or legal damages that could be garnered from your wages, as you are unemployed ( and unemployable) for over 5 years now and not likely to ever do any compensated work again. Your reputation is terrible, due to your own deranged antics and crimes. You are a near pauper, Grandad. You live in church provided housing.

Of course, none of that explains why, rather than taking any actual legal action to redress these many wrongs you’ve claimed I’ve committed against you — like getting me prosecuted for “revenge porn”, or suing me for libel and getting my web site taken offline and me barred from using the Internet — you prefer to chase me around on Disqus and post this sort of silliness while hiding behind a fake name.

As I said, the math’s not complicated here, “Melanie”.

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 5:42 pm

what you know of the Law comes entirely from prime time television, probably “Matlock” and “Murder She Wrote”, anything on before 9PM anyway

Melanie Saffka
on August 28, 2015 at 5:49 pm

the math is like this : there is no profit in suing a PAUPER like you!

Sunshyne Tomlan
on July 11, 2016 at 8:47 am

THIEF is the highest moral level you inhabit, you impotently furious insect and tormenter of the elderly!

Thanks for demonstrating exactly what I’m talking about Jason. “Stalker denies being stalker by stalking stalking victim via Disqus.” Jason Christopher Hughes, aka “Melanie Saffka,” has been using the Internet to stalk people since at least 1995. Jason may have forgotten, but Jono’s witnessed his antics in the past, more than once, I believe.

http://www.extinct-marsupial.org used to have revenge porn, now the domain has been seized legally from Schlesinger and used as rebuttal of his lies by his many stalking victims. He has the stolen nude photos up right now on his acme-dot website. ie at this moment he is infringing and stalking with ‘revenge porn.”

you are the one publishing stolen nude photos, so you Do Not Get to call anyone else “stalker” while you are … publishing stolen nude photos … AGAIN. This is another free lesson in basic logic which you will not comprehend as you are barking mad and completely psychopathic.

TAKE DOWN ALL THE STOLEN PHOTOS AND WE NEED NEVER BOTHER EACH OTHER AGAIN, I don’t care what you write, but this stalker thievery of yours will not stand. otherwise? you know what is going to happen, and it has barely begun.

Sunshyne Tomlan
on June 30, 2016 at 10:18 am

you are guilthy of not just felony stalking, but also arson, Dave. You don’t get to call your victims “stalker.”

I feel that part of the problem is that canonical have always had too many irons in the fire: desktop, server, cloud computing, mobile, etc…
For instance, with OpenStack, they had a good opportunity to leverage their historical leadership instead of letting “partners” getting the best of it on top of their platform. And they jumped on another business that is already too crowded: mobile phones.

Moreover, such IP policy rather than ensuring revenue is actually diverting potential business partnerships. It’s understood neither by the community nor the industry, it just amplify the old prejudice that Canonical is leeching off the FOSS community.
My friendly advice would be to focus on core business and make Canonical the obvious choice for support contracts for Ubuntu (sadly, it’s currently not). If they do, Canonical could become a billion-dollar company in few years.

Hi Josh, our support team is awesome, if you can point out times when they’ve sucked for you then I’d be happy to give that feedback to them. If you want to just ping me privately then that’s fine; if you want to outline specific problems you’ve had publicly I’d also like to take that Pepsi challenge to help us get better then that’s awesome too.

Obviously we all go way back and you know that plenty of Ubuntu developers think highly of your work so I promise whatever problems you have with our work I’ll be more than happy to march up the hill. Don’t hold back on me, let me have it!

i had a server support contract about 6l years ago, just for a year. on the two occasions i called on them i got fobbed off because they didn’t want to get involved in my email setup problems. furthermore, they were only awake during Western Hemisphere daylight hours. oh, and they don’t speak indonesian, so all the IT support queries had to come through me.

so, canonical’s support service just wasn’t a proposition for me and my company, and i didn’t renew the subscription.

how does canonical become relevant to me? by being awake at my time, speaking my language (or the language of my employees), and by getting their hands dirty doing crappy jobs like fixing botched email setups!

I agree that Canonical has too many irons in the fire. I have shared this a number of times internally that I wish there was more focus on a few core business areas.

I also worry about the reputation that Canonical is developing with this IP policy. This is why I think this is more about “intent” than anything – irrespective of the law, this policy presents a perception that Canonical is not a great team player.

Leaving perceptions of Canonical aside, as I said below, I don’t see any way for this policy to successfully generate revenue. If Canonical wants money, then give me something for that money I actually want to pay for instead of creating a “hidden speed trap”. For example:

… etc. 1, 3, and 4 should look familiar because they are RH’s business model, and RH is financially successful. I’m not going to pay Ubuntu money in order to “license their binaries”, though; I’ll just use Debian instead. Switching from Ubuntu to Debian will cost me, oh, minutes of time lost. (3) could also lead to secondary revenue by placement of third-party programs on the device, ala Windows and Android.

As for 2, well, I’d pay quite a bit to make sure that my bug reports don’t get instant marked “cannot reproduce” or “file with upstream project “.

I too feel that Canonical has too many irons in the fire. At times I fear they are going the way of Novell. At the very least they risk alienating people that are not chasing the latest fad.

The desktop, for example, has the appearance of being neglected while Canonical pursues tablets, phones, television, etc. This same rotating pursuit of something new I think ads to the feeling that Canonical doesn’t play nice. People get invested in one pursuit only to have Canonical choose to go a different direction.

For instance, with OpenStack, they had a good opportunity to leverage their historical leadership instead of letting “partners” getting the best of it on top of their platform. And they jumped on another business that is already too crowded: mobile phones.

Hi Hiakel, I get the feeling that you think Ubuntu and Canonical bailed on OpenStack to go after phones, which is clearly not the case.

Ubuntu Openstack is overwhelmingly the most popular OpenStack platform, and it’s been in production by multiple telcos for years now. Names like Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, Bloomberg, IBM, NEC, Yahoo! Japan, and the list goes on and on.

I challenge the assertion that Canonical is “leeching off the FOSS community.” when everyone clearly acknowledges that Canonical was one of the leading drivers of getting OpenStack off the ground in the first place. Feel free to flame us about the IP policy, or the CLA that you might not like (hey by the way, plenty of OSS projects have CLAs!), but please, when it comes to OpenStack, we were on board from day one, and some people thought we were dumb for doing so, and those people now claim we weren’t even there. Either way we’re going to keep shipping the best OpenStack in the world!

Jono, I remember watching that cool documentary “Revolution OS” back in my Ubuntu fanboy days. I remember a part of it when someone compare the open source community to Communism… Until that point I haven’t thought about the subject in that way, and I think they were right. The most common comments I see at the forums when a really cool proprietary software were launched was “SOMEONE should make a open source version of it” … Just like in Communism, it just works until the other ones monay runs out… In this case it’s other people time and resources to build another version for the good of the community. In the end it just do not work. Almost nobody wants to contribute, just to use it and have some profits over it.

either through services like google does with android.
or through a deal like mozilla-google. offer microsoft (yes.) to be default search engine, for a price.
a red hat like enterprise focused version(lts with added cost). and a fedora like community focused version free as ever.
how does red hat treat its derivatives? oracle, centOS ETC.
merge with redhat.

You are looking at the symptoms, not the cause. People tolerate all kinds of business models around open source as long the business results major contributions upstream.

People hate canonical because canonical contributes so little code to upstream projects. It has got a bit better, but smaller player like suse still run circles around canonical. And because of the rise of ubuntu, these better contributing players get less revenue, and less resources are available for upstream contributions. Because of this grudge, they pick up on minor details that are actively tolerated when other companies do same things. Examples:

“must recompile is bad IP policy” -> It’s ok with RHEL because redhat is the core of everything
“mir is bad” -> but google’s freon is ok, because chromium os is a serious contributor to DRM stack

“desktop search box is a privacy leak” -> chrome is fine, because they created an awesome browser
“upstart has a CLA” -> yes CLA is bad, but really that was just a excuse for many.
“launchpad is closed, I wont use it” -> “look, github is so nice!”

So say, if canonical had put engineering effort in noveau and ati driver improvements instead of packaging proprietary drivers, there wouldn’t me much complaining about mir. Likewise, people wouldn’t care about IP policy if ubuntu enterprise efforts caused as much upstream core contributions as RHEL does.

From the ecosystem POV, why should I care that canonical is unable to extract revenue, when most of that revenue seems to go into ubuntu specific packaging and patches?

Well, the CLA is a symptom, not a cause. Many people are happy to hack on projects that have CLAs. I think the challenge that Canonical faces with projects such as Unity and Mir is that (a) they have become socially weathered – people associate those projects (righty or wrongly) as something is not “pure” enough in the eyes of Free Software, and (b) because much of the design is done privately, I don’t think people want to hack on projects where they can’t rise to a maintainer level role.

Can you point me to a prominent project with a CLA that is backed by a for-profit entity that has a critical mass of external contribution?

I think CLAs when there is a non-profit involved is entirely different than when a for-profit is involved. A non-profit control of a codebase allows for multiple commercial interests to work together as peers. But when one commercial interest holds special privledge with regard to being able to take code and integrate it into proprietary licensing..then no… I don’t think CLAs are a problem for that codebase.

I think all this talk of “purity” is really silly, and your trying to navel gaze far too much. This is pure pragmatism. Smart software companies, don’t write code for free for their competitor unless those competitors are also writing code for free for you. A Canonical CLA is a bad deal for any Canonical competitor. An Apache CLA is not a bad deal, because noone actually directly competes in the market with Apache. Non profits are effectively demilitarized zones for copyright licensing.

Now if Canonical actually had a partner ecosystem…. then ISVs in that ecosystem would have a self-interest in signing the CLA and helping Canonical build the platform they rely on. Maybe with snappy Canonical will finally have a chance with an ISV ecosystem that has some legs. Maybe not. But right now… its all tumbleweeds, and tumbleweeds don’t sign CLAs.

Alan Bell
on August 28, 2015 at 8:46 pm

Odoo has a CLA, quite a lot of people happy to hack on it https://github.com/odoo/odoo/tree/master/doc/cla all people who want the product to be better because it is important to their business one way or another, it is a viable partner ecosystem.

Alan Bell
on August 28, 2015 at 8:59 pm

The challenge with Unity and Mir is that I have zero clue what my business model is as a partner in the ecosystem. Who are my customers and why do they pay me money? Now with something like OpenStack I understand the proposition, people would pay to have it installed and configured plus training and administration support and so on. For Juju I kind of understand the theory, but it makes things harder and more expensive, it is really built for self-installers, you can’t manage a collection of Juju customers, which is fine, you can recruit end users as code contributors. If you are building stuff like Unity and Mir, nobody at all has a compelling reason to use it for themselves or their customers. Sure, I will use it on my phone and one day my laptop, but it isn’t strategic to anyone but Canonical.

Suse is about the same size as Canonical, maybe slightly larger. And that’s only counting them as an independent business unit, not all of their parent company Attachmate. Red Hat has roughly 10x the number of employees that Canonical has. Ubuntu may be hugely popular, but as a company Canonical is still one of the small players.

“From the ecosystem POV, why should I care that canonical is unable to extract revenue, when most of that revenue seems to go into ubuntu specific packaging and patches?”

Because this isn’t a free lunch. If you like Ubuntu and want it to succeed Canonical is going to need to make money. If they don’t make money they will have to shut down and then Ubuntu won’t get the engineering/design/marketing investment and it will wither.

I don’t know whether there is a real problem with Canonical’s IP policy. Obviously, they can do this.

Whether they should do this, is a very different question. The best solution would be to have a completely separated, trademark stripped build like Centos or just go to Debian. I highly doubt that any one of those two alternatives are in the interest of Canonical.

While I am no fan of separate versions of platforms (e.g. RHEL vs Fedora vs CentOS), I think that this does solve many of these challenges. I think it would be an interesting thing for Canonical to consider (preferably in conjunction with the Community Council).

it doesnt have to be entirely separate. But you do have to give up public mirrors so you can control access.

Seriously all of this comes down to “don’t be a dick” CoC for usage right? Don’t be a dick by commercialize Ubuntu without trickling money back. I think that is entirely a reasonable ethics statement. The issue is enforcement. You are not going to be able to use social pressure to enforce that sort of usage CoC. You have to enforcement via some sort of membership and keep the power to eject people from that membership based on their actions.

A CoC for users with teeth for bad actors. You spell out what is allowed in the CoC and you cut people off who break those rules, and then you let them back in if you can come to terms with them.

But this absolutely requires a RHEL “like” approach to distribution…where you can cut people off from updates if they break the encoded conduct norms.

But you don’t have to “charge” for access… but you do have to tokenize access in a way that you can lock people out.

Canonical could build and support a partner ecosystem. We pay significant amounts annually for partnerships, but not with Canonical. If Canonical focussed on making Ubuntu the operating system for the business desktop rather than concentrating exclusively on consumer focussed stuff like music and videos and shopping then system integrators would be interested in deploying Ubuntu and would pay proper money for it.
If the phone had a target market of business users rather than “people who would rather have an iPhone” then it would do quite well. If it had LDAP linked authentication, talked to an Asterisk PBX, was set up for encrypted email out of the box with your postfix/dovecot Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Desktop and maybe had a native Odoo client it would do quite well.
The phone should be “the best phone for people who have a business running on lots of Free Software” rather than trying to make it the third best mobile operating system for people who want a phone.

I’m not sure why LDAP, Asterisk, etc would have to be done instead of phones, but I do agree that these types of things would make Ubuntu a lot more attractive for a lot of companies. What’s needed isn’t much more than a cohesive set of simple GUIs for common operations, really.

no, not instead, I mean that your Ubuntu phone is set up to work with your other Ubuntu stuff. So, you install asterisk on your Ubuntu server and your Ubuntu phone just becomes a SIP or IAX handset for it. If you install Odoo, then your phone can scan expense receipts into your ERP on your Ubuntu Server, if you install a mail server on your Ubuntu server then your Ubuntu phone works with it really easily, if you install LDAP you can auth against it from the phone, and manage your fleet of phones from your Ubuntu server. Right now Ubuntu phone, desktop and server have almost no relationship with each other – they might be the same code, but there is no special magic that happens between them.

I think one of the most significant roadblocks to desktop linux in the enterprise is the lack of a true competitor to MS Office. Until Open Office/Libre Office are really competive options (or MS finally gives up and ports Mac Office to Linux), forget it. If you really want desktop linux to be an effective option, there needs to be a frictionless office suite. That will get Ubuntu on the enterprise desktop, and people will pay for it.

I have used OpenOffice.org and then LibreOffice for the last 10 years or so (probably more) and I exchange documents and spreadsheets with loads of different organisations, I also generate spreadsheets programatically for people to use, it just isn’t an issue. The type of spreadsheet that is tied to a single platform with macros, linked sheets to fixed UNC paths, data from ODBC sources and so on is much less and less of a thing. If you have a monster like that, you should build a real multi-user system for it. Other than the inappropriate spreadsheets, everything just works, it really isn’t a problem. – and I have used pretty huge complex spreadsheets in LibreOffice without much issue.

First, from my (also non-laywer) understanding, if you distribute a binary that is derived from Free Software code, the code itself must also be avaliable. This doesn’t preclude commercial offerings, and in fact, trying to preclude commercial offerings, or re-offerings, would be a violation of the software license (additional restrictions).

So, while the pratice Cannonical is trying to prevent/discourage is shady as hell, its sadly fully legal and license compliant (assuming these re-distributors are also offering source. If not, that’s another avenue of enforcement). The only leg they Cannonical has to stand on would be trademark enforcement, if someone is distributing branded binaries from a non-authorized source.

These licenses are meant to encourage, rathern than enforce, community.

“assuming these re-distributors are also offering source. If not, that’s another avenue of enforcement”

By and large these re-distributors aren’t offering binaries, they’re taking money from users and then pointing those users at Ubuntu’s archive to download the binaries. This way they don’t legally have to provide the source to their users.

the only way they don’t have an obligation to provide the source on demand is if they are not doing the redistribution – and if they are not doing the redistribution and are pointing people at the Ubuntu repos then how does this policy apply?
It is logically consistent for Canonical to say that if people are distributing binaries and are expecting Canonical to keep the archives going to meet the potential future GPL source request obligations then they need to talk to Canonical about that and come to an arrangement if they want to delegate their future obligations to Canonical.

Snappy will solve this problem. Because with snappy Canonical will be an affirmative gatekeeper and the idea of a mirrorable repos will be gone.

So looking into my crystal ball. If Canonical is serious about this issue.. then the existing mirrorable app repo structure that everyone in the Ubuntu ecosystem relies on is going to have to go away to fully close the loop hole.

Its the logical conclusion. The repos will still exist to build against as part of building the official snappy images, but the public distributed mirror access has to be turned off to solve the problem. Canonical might start penning repo mirroring agreements if they want to keep a mirror system in place for institutional users, but the public mirrors are going to have to be turned off so Canonical can act as a gatekeeper and enforce policy with regard to access.

Let me ask; have you tried snappy yet? You make it sound as if you have to go through Canonical to use them. That’s wrong.

Also, a mirror is not a modified version. It’s a mirror. If it’s modified, then it’s not a mirror, but a modified copy.

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 30, 2015 at 1:52 pm

you have to go through Canonical for the snap store right for discoverability? And if you actually care about the snaps being secure and not screwing with your system.. you have to go through the snap store. And if you want automatic updates.. you have to use the snap store.

Snaps are just another packaging format…. the power is in the repository/store model Canonical is using.

And to be even more clear, the 3rd party app layer in the snap paradigm isn’t what I’m talking about here. Those things aren’t… “Ubuntu the platform.” But for snappy… “Ubuntu the platform” will be gated. No more public media to download, its going to controlled by Canonical. So if a company wants to try to..resell…Ubuntu snappy..Canonical will have a way to cut them off from installable images and from updates to the platform by cutting off their access to the snappy store.

But for 3rd party snaps… if your a user and you don’t care where your snaps come from, then you’ll pick them up from random people and get your device hacked. Remember the concept of the framework that has extra privileges is entirely validiated by the snap store..not by the snappy client. You can build a snap which is basically unconfimed, and the snappy client tool will let a user install it. So all the security benefit from snaps, as implemented as apparmor payloads in the snaps themselves, is tied intimately with the snap store and its automatic process to check the apparmor payloads and flag them for human review if they are too permissive.

You’re saying you don’t get the apparmor stuff with non-store snaps? That doesn’t seem to match the documentation?

Jef “Credible Hulk” Spaleta
on August 30, 2015 at 10:25 pm

A snap can basically have any apparmor policy at all. The snap store checks to see if the policy for uploaded snaps is too permissive to allow in without human review. Hence why things like “framework” snaps will need extraordinary permissions and will require human review.

The security is in the validation of the apparmor policy by the automatic and human review associated with the store. It is possible to build a snap that is essentially unconfined and can do whatever it wants on the system..if you install it manually instead of installing it from the store.

-jef

Dustin L. Black
on August 28, 2015 at 3:56 pm

This is quite simply a poor use of energy. The only real point to protecting IP in this way is to protect (or generate) revenue. Canonical is effectively pushing a business model that begins to rely on “abuse” patterns, which they also set the definition for — a vicious cycle. It’s akin to patent trolling, and does nothing to generate either community or business value.

I admire the cultural push to keep one release open and free (and I say that as loyal Red Hatter). Jono clearly points out the conundrum this creates in running a profitable business while keeping the community core. But a heavy-handed enforcement model for IP is entirely counter to free software convictions. Business value and credibility must be generated at the customer experience. If Canonical focuses their energy on partnerships, certifications, knowledge, interface, responsiveness, commitment, support, guidance… the IP question becomes irrelevant as the supposed “abuse” is marginalized when the customer base becomes loyal and dependent.

If the source is available and it’s been released under the GPL or similar license, any company can create a binary from it and use in any product, provided they follow the license requirements (attribution, etc).
Maybe Canonical is adding trademark information in the binaries it generates, but then, if that would be the case, it’s an issue of trademark protection and not intellectual property…
(Note: Viktor = “DevOps Engineer” and Viktor != “Lawyer”)

“The core issue here seems to be whether the act of compiling binaries provides copyright over those binaries. Some believe it does, some believe it doesn’t. My opinion: I just don’t know.”

Jono, I’ve just read the IP policy, and it says nothing about that. The problem is that if you want to create a custom Ubuntu distribution, then you must remove every single trademark related to canonical. Moreover, when you say “the act of compiling binaries”, that sounds so broad, and it’s only related to the act of creating a custom Ubuntu Distribution. Another thing is that you can’t create software and use their trademarks in your software, you just can make a reference to ubuntu.

I’ll have to say I agree with the FSF on this one, that distributions should charge for their software and not make them free of charge unless there’s a direct benefit of doing that.

Oh, and I don’t really understand why binaries and packages have to be free. I’m not talking legal here, but ethics, morals and economics. The users freedom does not in any way require free binaries. What is required is that the user is able to build the software. If the user doesn’t want to do it, they should be able to get packages from someone who does. That’s a very nice and honest way to make a buck that can be used to finance development. This is one of the fundamental points of the Free Software philosophy.

I think I would like to, yes. You would have every right to compile the software using the source and add yourself as distributor of that binary, but you would not be allowed to distribute my binary using me as responsible party without my consent. And this consent can obviously be given in advance and in many shapes and forms. For instance, I can give you my permission to redistribute the binaries on the condition that it’s unmodified.

Of course, I’m only thinking out loud and I’m not sure exactly what it would look like in practice, but I do think it’s time we had a discussion regarding how to fix our financial issues and also how to distribute responsibility. Because they are very real and they do make things more difficult than they ought to be. But I really do consider binary redistribution as a convenience rather than as a necessary freedom. In lots of cases, you should be able to redistribute the binaries, but that should be a separate license/agreement. Binary redistribution was an important freedom in the days before the internet. Today, communication is fast and simple and it’s not difficult to get tools necessary to compile and build packages.

That’s a totally reasonable solution for your own license scheme. The problem I would have is if you take someone else’s open source code and then try to add a binary non-distribution restriction (like Canonical is doing).

But why exactly would that be a problem? If you redistribute the binaries in any way, then you have to provide the sources as well. This means there’s no restriction, except you’ll have to compile the sources or have someone else do it for you. I don’t really see the big deal. It would’ve been an unreasonable restriction ten years ago, but today, I don’t really see the issue.

Anonymous
on August 29, 2015 at 10:09 pm

You receive sources and the rights to distribute a binary, then you turn around and deny your downstream from distributing the binary? That just rubs me the wrong way. I guess that’s why I like the GPL so much. You don’t get to deny rights to downstream that you received from upstream.

They don’t do that. That’s the point. Because they didn’t receive the binaries from anyone. They get the source code and build the software. To me, that’s the point of the GPL. Then I get their binaries from them, along with the source code and I can build and redistribute as much as I like. If I want to distribute a modified version of Ubuntu, then I’ll either have to get their permission or rebuild the packages myself, so that they’re no longer responsible for the packages I use in my distro. In my eyes, this is very similar to what Mozilla does with Firefox and I think it’s a very good idea, because it invites trust. You’re either responsible or not responsible. If it’s out of your control, then you should not be held responsible. And if someone makes a modified version of Ubuntu that’s intended to cause harm to the user, then Canonical has the legal right to go after them, as Mozilla has the right to go after anyone abusing Firefox. VLC does not have this right, because they don’t enforce it. Then, by law, you lose that right.

If you’re running Ubuntu, then pick a package, any package and do “apt-cache show package_name | grep Maintainer”. You’ll see that this package is maintained by Ubuntu Developers. Do the same in Linux Mint, and you’ll still see many packages are maintained by Ubuntu Developers. If you do the same with LMDE, I guess you’ll see the same, except the packages will be maintained by Debian Developers. Linux Mint has paid Canonical for this right. It was, if I remember correctly, a single-digit amount, meaning between 1 and 9. Whether it’s in dollars, euros or pounds, probably doesn’t matter much. But this symbolic sum means there’s legal protection. If you don’t enforce your brand, you don’t have any legal means to protect it and anyone is allowed to use your name. This is destructive, because there’s no one to protect the trust.

Anonymous
on August 30, 2015 at 3:05 pm

Debian gives Ubuntu the right to distribute Debian binaries. Whether Ubuntu chooses not to distribute those binaries doesn’t matter. They still did receive that right. Ubuntu turns around and attempts to refuse that right to downstream users. Fortunately, the GPL forbids this practice. Anybody creating an Ubuntu derivative is allowed to redistribute Ubuntu binaries for any GPL-licensed package.

I don’t think Ubuntu-derivatives should use Canonical servers (without an agreement with Canonical of course). If you want to distribute Ubuntu binaries, at least have the courtesy to use your own servers.

It does matter that Canonical doesn’t use Debian binaries. Of course, it does in a discussion about reuse of binaries. And the idea that Canonical should pay for every single user on the planet, is wrong. At best, it makes it more difficult to have open distros, because you have to have unlimited capacity. For instance, say Linux Mint has their own servers that hosts their distros packages. I would like to create my own distro, so I use their packages and their servers, completely free of charge, because Linux Mint cannot restrict my commercialization of their hardware. I’m massively successful, getting millions of users. Linux Mint has to pay for all of it, because otherwise, they’re doing something wrong. I’m entitled to their hardware. Does that seem right to you? Why is Canonical the only one who should have to pay? Just because they have money? Well, that practice would be the killer of open distros and you’ll have to choose between something like Red Hat and something completely non-commercial.

Or do you think it should be legal to restrict hotlinking to binary packages? What does the GPL say about that? I think it’s better if you don’t have to pay subscription fees in order to get Ubuntu updates. But if every other distro is entitled to use Canonical’s servers, that might very well be the only option. Computing is not free of charge. Someone has to actually pay the bill.

Anonymous
on August 30, 2015 at 11:51 pm

Did you misread what I wrote? I said derivatives should not use Canonical’s servers.

Sure, so we’re back at the stage where Free Software is worthless and CRM is the only way to make money. Development is nothing, expensive phone calls is everything. In other words; you need to be big to succeed in Free Software, or you need to be a charity. This directly contradicts the Free Software Philosophy.

Matthew Garrett
on August 31, 2015 at 1:21 am

The GPL does not require that you give everybody access to your binaries. Canonical would be perfectly entitled to prohibit derivatives from using Canonical’s servers. They don’t need to prohibit all redistribution of binaries to achieve that.

Right, but that would mean there’s a restriction on third-party use of binaries. That was the point. It’s not an absolute. I’m also not discussing law, but how things should be. I think there should be a distinction between source and binary and I don’t think it’s always beneficial that you can’t restrict redistribution of binaries.

Matthew Garrett
on August 31, 2015 at 8:13 am

No it wouldn’t. It would mean that there’s a restriction on third-party use of a service. If I build a GPLed binary I’m not required to give it away – I’m entitled to charge money for it and only provide it to people who give me money. That’s a core part of the free software definition. But I don’t get to control what people do with those binaries once they have them in their own possession – that’s another core part of the free software definition.

Does the Free Software definition even mention binaries? It mentions four freedoms and I don’t see how some restrictions on binary redistribution would really affect it at all. Even if you couldn’t redistribute binaries, you’d still have the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to distribute it as you like, etc. You’d just have to compile it or get someone to do it for you. That could’ve been a severe restriction back in the days, because you would have to obtain compilers, libraries, etc, which would most likely have to be ordered and sent on disks through snailmail. But the word has changed. So has users. Way back when, a user was pretty much assumed to be a software developer. That’s no longer the case at all, when only a very small minority have development skills. You could argue that this in and of itself would be a hardship to the user, but I would disagree, because that’s why you have distributors. I simply think we should make it easier to make a buck doing honest work, like packaging and distributing software. If the GPL will always prevent that, I believe it will suffocate slowly or you’ll get a situation where only large players can make a living that way. Canonical, Oracle and Red Hat can always find a way.

I’m not saying this is simple. I think it’s a difficult question, but I think it’s an important one. But I certainly do stand by my claim that, on a fundamental level, the source code is the program and that binaries are more of a convenience. Free Software would not fall apart if binary redistribution was licensed separately. It seems to me that a lot of people forget that a fundamental goal of the Free Software Movement is to enable small companies to survive and to reduce the power of giant corporations.

Sure, small groups can make packages, but doing so professionally is difficult, because the moment you release a binary, it goes into someone else’s store free of charge in order to promote their services. The GPL seems to contradict its own purpose in some ways.

“The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and unmodified versions.”

Matthew Garrett
on August 31, 2015 at 2:18 pm

Yes, it mentions binaries:

“The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable
forms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and
unmodified versions.”

You can’t really have it both ways. If it’s so trivial to generate binaries that it’s not a real inconvenience, then withholding permission to do so does nothing to stop companies competing unfairly. If it’s hard enough that companies are inconvenienced, individual users are even more inconvenienced.

Sure, but how many make their living from selling products? Advertisement, revenue sharing, consultancy and support contracts seems to be dominating. In a Norwegian government office, they used a free software PDF tool of some kind. The CTO was criticized in national media for paying for software that could’ve been obtained free of charge. He could’ve argued that they wanted to use the official binaries direct from the source, but that wouldn’t hold water as long as it’s perfectly ok for anyone to distribute those binaries free of charge. Anyway, they promised never to let such a mistake happen again.

Matthew Garrett
on August 31, 2015 at 1:24 am

“if someone makes a modified version of Ubuntu that’s intended to cause
harm to the user, then Canonical has the legal right to go after them”

Canonical already has that right, even without the IP policy – they can just use trademark law. Restricting redistribution of binaries isn’t necessary to achieve that.

Wilson
on September 2, 2015 at 2:18 pm

So their policy is useless and they are just being annoying for no reason 🙁

Miller
on March 15, 2017 at 9:21 am

Google Translator
Jono Bacon I just wanted to say thank you for your participation in the development of Ubuntu.